HBR On Strategy

It’s an idea that’s a non-starter at many organizations: collaborating with a competitor. But Yale School of Management professor Barry Nalebuff says leaders who refuse to consider teaming up with other companies—even when there are clear mutual benefits—may be leaving value on the table. In this episode, you’ll learn how companies like Apple, Ford, Google, and others have analyzed and capitalized...

As the chair and CEO of Sodexo, the France-based food services and facilities management company, Sophie Bellon leads one of the largest employers in the world, with front-line workers in nearly 50 countries. Managing that workforce—and the supply chains that enable them to do their jobs—is a complex undertaking that involves balancing both global strategy with local execution. In this episode, Ha...

In early 2015, Microsoft’s senior leaders were facing a set of difficult decisions. The firm had been struggling to innovate and grow as fast as its competitors. Now they were considering new opportunities that would yield higher growth but lower margins—like shifting away from perpetual licensing to focus on subscription sales. Harvard Business School professor Fritz Foley studied this period of...

It’s a dilemma facing more and more brands: Should your business sell on Amazon? It’s the most visited e-commerce platform in the U.S. and the dominant retailer in 28 other countries. But that reach comes at a price. Harvard Business School associate professor Ayelet Israeli says there are downsides for many Amazon sellers, like costs, competition, and the lack of data. In this episode, Israeli of...

Companies of every size across the world are basing more of their work around projects, but research shows that nearly two-thirds of those efforts fail. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez has studied projects and project management for decades. He argues that at least some of the blame for these failures lies with executives who misunderstand the fundamentals of projects and fail to dedicate enough of their...

Booking.com was founded by a Dutch university student in 1996. It grew slowly for almost a decade. But by 2011, the company was generating more than a billion dollars in profits annually — making it the most financially successful digital travel market, at the time. The secret to that accelerating growth was the company’s use of large-scale testing and experimentation. In this episode, Harvard Bus...

So much has been written about how to future-proof a strategy. But Peter Scoblic says that too many companies still rely on short-sighted strategies that don’t effectively plan for different potential future scenarios. Scoblic is a co-founder and principal of the consultancy Event Horizon Strategies. In this episode, he explains how thoughtful and ongoing scenario-planning exercises can help organ...

As the CEO of one of the largest energy holding companies in the U.S., Lynn Good is leading Duke Energy’s aggressive transition to renewables and net zero emissions. It’s a complex undertaking that involves short-term planning and long-term advances in technology as well as managing a wide range of stakeholders. In this episode, HBR editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius sits down with Good to discuss her s...

When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand. Unfortunately, that often leads to patchwork solutions or problems not truly getting resolved. Entrepreneur, leadership coach, and author Anne Morriss offers a different framework. In this episode, she outlines a five-step process for solving any prob...

One of the world’s largest automotive glass producers, Fuyao Glass, must decide where to fulfill its upcoming contracts. One option is their U.S.-based factory, where production rates are lower. The other is an older factory in China that produces below the cost target, but also incurs extensive shipping costs and requires a far greater amount of inventory holding. Drawing on his case study, “Fuya...

The secret to success for many Silicon Valley tech companies isn’t necessarily that they’re ultra-nimble start-ups, or that they’re led by tech-savvy geniuses. Andy McAfee says their success often has more to do with a specific type of corporate culture that focuses on finding unconventional solutions to hard business problems. McAfee is a principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Ma...

In the 1990s and 2000s, video game developer Epic Games had a string of mid-size successes. But the release of Fortnite Battle Royale in 2017 changed the company’s path forever. The game was a blockbuster. By 2019, Fortnite had registered more than 250 million users, with 10 million concurrent users. But Fortnite’s phenomenal success raised a new question for Epic: How could they turn this singula...

So much has been written about Amazon’s outsized growth. But Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta says it’s the company’s unusual approach to strategy that has captured his scholarly attention. In this episode, he shares how Amazon upended traditional corporate strategy by diversifying into multiple products serving many end users, instead of having a narrow focus. Gupta argues that some...

Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation inspired a generation of entrepreneurs and businesses, ranging from small start-ups to global corporations. But three decades after the theory was introduced, debates have emerged around how it should be applied — especially within technology start-ups that have driven so much economic growth since 2000. In this episode, a panel of expert schol...

In February 2013, U.S. Airways announced that it would merge with American Airlines to create the world’s largest airline. During the acquisition, then-CEO Doug Parker and his board had transformative decisions to make. How should two large corporations merge their operations? Which members of each company’s C-suites should stay? How fast should they move on these changes? Parker knew that these s...

Is your growth strategy working consistently? Strategy expert Ken Favaro says creating and sustaining growth isn’t rocket science. However, you do have to understand the difference between “organic” growth and “inorganic” alternatives, which come through a merger or acquisition. In this episode, Favaro argues that it’s important to focus on creating incentives for organic growth within your organi...

For more than a century, the pharmaceutical company Roche has been headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. It’s one of more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies who have long been based there. Howard Yu, Lego Professor of Management and Innovation at IMD Business School in Switzerland, says that this industrial cluster is a unique example of enduring competitive advantage. In this episode, you'll le...

Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati says the most successful start-ups have one thing in common: a soul. “Soul” goes beyond culture, purpose, or even the founder. It’s about having three things: strategic business intent, a strong connection to customers, and a stellar employee experience. Gulati argues that if you don’t preserve these elements as you scale, you’ll lose what makes your...

We all know Silicon Valley’s mantra: fail fast, fail often. But when is it OK to fail in the real world? Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson says it depends on how and why you fail. She’s an expert on psychological safety, and she explains the difference between good and bad types of failures. (One has to do with experimentation, while the other is rooted in inattention or lack of trai...

Investor and author William Thorndike studied eight CEOs who outperformed the market and their peers. The group included big names, like Warren Buffet and Katharine Graham, but also other leaders who are virtually unknown today. Thorndike noticed that these eight iconoclastic leaders all took a similar approach to capital allocation. They focused on investing their companies’ profits to repurchase...

In 2020, Kwame Spearman left his consulting job in New York City to take over an iconic independent bookstore, the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, Colorado—his hometown. Spearman saw an opportunity to reinvent the local business to build a community space after the pandemic. But to keep the store successful, he had figure out how to compete with online retailers and big box stores, amid techn...

Does your company have a strategy for working with investors? Whether your company is big or small, IBM’s former CEO Sam Palmisano says it’s essential to build relationships with your shareholders before there’s a specific problem to address. In this episode, you’ll learn how to communicate with your investors to meet their needs — without needing to change your strategy.

Efficiency is usually something businesses strive for, but is it possible to be too efficient? Strategy expert Roger Martin warns that an obsession with eliminating inefficiencies in U.S. companies has come with many social and economic costs—from staffing to wages and even corporate debt levels. But he argues that it’s not too late for businesses to change their priorities. In this episode, he he...

When Hubert Joly became CEO of Best Buy in 2012, online retailers like Amazon were exploding in popularity, and Best Buy was facing a sea change. But Joly famously turned around the struggling electronics retailer by changing the organization’s holistic strategy. In this episode, you’ll learn how Joly re-defined Best Buy’s purpose and aligned incentives with that larger strategy. You’ll also learn...

Careem launched as the “Uber of the Middle East” in Dubai in 2012, with a mission to make life and work better for drivers in the region. Despite technical, cultural, and financial pressures, Careem eventually became the Middle East’s first unicorn start-up, valued at more than a billion dollars. It was acquired by Uber in 2019 for $3.1 billion. In this episode, Harvard Business School professor S...